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Drac, the blockchain and cryptocurrency company born in Barcelona

With almost 550 views, the Spanish startup is the winner of the FundingBox video pitch competition launched at 4YFN 2018

They had their booth at 4YFN in Barcelona last February. As in FundingBox we love startups and felt like doing something fun to network in a fresh way, we decided to launch a startup pitch competition during the startup side event of Mobile World Congress. We were spotting some interesting startups and asking them to pitch for us. That is how we met Xavi Molina, COO at Drac, after recording a short pitch to upload it to our Twitter account during 4YFN.

His pitch got almost 550 views, beating the rest of the startups. “We invest in projects related to blockchain technology, also projects that use cryptocurrencies. We advise companies that want to implement the blockchain technology and also people who want to invest in blockchain projects or cryptocurrencies around the world”, said Xavi. His pitch is very clear, Drac is about blockchain and cryptocurrencies, but as we wanted to know more about what they do, we decided to interview him.

Drac is a company from Barcelona that helps all sort of companies and individuals to implement blockchain technology and extend the knowledge on cryptocurrencies. From creating a cryptocurrency or develop tokens, to consultancy services, and prediction markets or cryptocurrencies investment funds. But they are currently focusing all their efforts on developing a cryptocurrency payment gateway, DracPay, and growing a wider client portfolio in the consultancy services.

Three founding members are making this possible: Eduard Pina is the CEO, with a background in economics; Sergio Calazón is an engineer and data analyst, and Xavi Molina, coming from the economics field as well as Eduard, is the COO. Besides, Drac counts on a large team of developers and contributors specialized in the blockchain technology.

Xavi thinks that those who say that the blockchain hype has passed and this can be seen with the continuous decline of the crypto-coins economy “may be right, because blockchain has been the first technology of its kind, but far better competitors have already taken the stage, such as Tangle or Hashgraph“. That is why they continuously keep refreshing themselves and do not exclude any kind of blockchain technology as they can prove to coexist separately. Actually, he sees plenty of business opportunities in everything that involves an intermediary role: Notary, Attorneys, Banks, Public Registration, etc., as well as he sees potential in the game sector when we speak about blockchain.

Etherum and the ICO bans

Regarding the recovery of Etherum from the ICO bans imposed by Google, Twitter and Facebook, Xavi has a very clear opinion: “Banning on those social media of all sort of advertisements related to cryptocurrency, not only ICOs and Ethereum, is just a way of preserving themselves. The constant bans have not been the reason for the market to collapse during these past weeks, it has only been an extra factor contributing to the larger cause. The main motive has been people’s fear in light of the possible regulations, the generated uncertainty and powerful traders taking advantage of the situation. Given the small trading volume and the lack of regulation, as it is the case in other markets, further result in a greater volatility. If the cryptocurrency market were regulated, these fluctuations wouldn’t be possible. A clear example is the blocking and closure of stock markets with a 10% index fall.”

The ideal blockchain employee

For those thinking about looking for a job in the blockchain field, Xavi recommends to learn a lot about cryptocurrencies (how they work, vocabulary on this field…). Also, joining communities of users in forums and Telegram is always a good idea. However, he advises not to “rely on self-proclaimed gurus”, instead, it is better to read digital media specialized in cryptocurrency news and learn languages, at least English. Besides, having some basic knowledge on economics and programming also helps. “The ideal employee in this industry is that one with great programming skills, English and Chinese speaker, with some economics, fundamental analysis and data analysis knowledge”, he remarks.

“The ideal employee in this industry is that one with great programming skills, English and Chinese speaker, with some economics, fundamental analysis and data analysis knowledge”

We can tell that Xavi is very passionate about blockchain, and he thinks that the projects related to prediction markets are the most interesting ones, because “it will be the starting point to change our society the way we know it now”, he points out, “specially in the work environment, productivity will have an enormous growth”, he predicts.